The Eads Bridge is the oldest remaining bridge crossing the Mississippi
River. The story of the Eads bridge, and of its builder, James Eads, is
fascinating and worth learning more about than what I can write in this
limited space.

James Eads made his fortune by finding ways to rig barges to salvage
sunken steamboats on the great river. During the Civil War, he built
a fleet of 8 iron warships for the US Navy in just 100 days. After the
war, he joined a group attempting to charter a corporation to build a
bridge across the Mississippi River at Saint Louis.

Opposed to Eads was a powerful lobby consisting of ferry boat operators,
steam boat companies, and investors from Chicago who did not wish to see
Saint Louis grow faster than the windy city. Eads went to Washington DC and
ended up having a formal charter established by Congress. Rather than
solving the problem, the law only seemed to cause more trouble. Finally,
Eads and his investors bought out the interest that their rivals held in
the bridge project. That gave Eads the signal he needed to start building.

The first phase of the project was building the huge piers. High pressure
caissons were used to allow workers to work below the surface of the river.
The caissons eventually went 100 feet below the river bed to find solid
bedrock. Eads required a bedrock foundation as a key feature in the bridge
design.

Once the piers were in place, Eads tackled the ironwork. The iron was
self-supported a short distance away from the piers. But once they
ventured any further from the piers, the iron needed support until the
arches could be joined in the middle. Eads built structures on top of the
bridge to act like cranes to hold up the iron. This allowed river traffic
to flow without being blocked by bridge construction. Once the two sides of
an arch were joined, the crane structures were removed.

The bridge has a number of innovative features. Eads patented many of
those features. For example, the bridge was designed so any one
support member could be removed for repair without having to build
falsework to support the bridge.

The Eads has two levels. Dual rail lines run on the lower level through
the metalwork. The upper level was built as a walkway and carriageway
for horse and buggy traffic. Later, the upper deck as reworked to be
a highway crossing for automobiles on the upper level, again, with
trains on the lower deck.

By the late 1990's, the Eads fell into disrepair. It was traded with
the City Of Saint Louis for the MacArthur Bridge. The City rebuilt the
bridge, first to support the Metrolink light rail project, and later
the upper deck for highway traffic. Completed in 2003, the bridge
should be good for at least 50 years before the next major update.
And the ferry company
that was so worried about the bridge? Well, the bridge no doubt
hurt the ferry traffic. But the ferry stayed for 30 more years as
a passenger ferry offering upgraded accommodations that were out of
the direct sun and with free ice water. The ferry operated into the
late 1920's carrying railroad cars. In the long run, the ferry was
too inefficient to beat the automobile, and had to shutdown for the
winter months, so the ferries eventually stopped running. But the Wiggins
Ferry Company, which operated at the site of the Eads Bridge, still exists today
as a real estate company that holds much of the waterfront property used
by the TRRA.

The following seven photos show a typical crossing of the Eads Bridge
by automobile from Illinois heading west into Saint Louis. The crossing
begins by climbing up a ramp to reach the traffic deck. As we cross
the railroad level, we can see a glimpse of a light rail train exiting
from the bridge on our left.